


Remember to Breathe

by caughtitonland



Series: Teethmarks [1]
Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: M/M, [challenge] h50_50, [genre] angst, [verse] teethmarks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-28
Updated: 2011-01-28
Packaged: 2017-10-20 14:48:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/213919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/caughtitonland/pseuds/caughtitonland
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's that first shudder that makes Danny look up from his book.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Remember to Breathe

**Author's Note:**

> Part 1 of the "Teethmarks" Series.

  


It's that first shudder that makes Danny look up from his book. There's not much to see, but when he squints, he can make out the goosebumps on Steve's forearm, the first visible sign that he's responding to stimuli. Danny folds down a corner of the page and immediately sets the book aside, his thoughts focused solely on Steve. He gives his partner's hand a squeeze, hoping for some other reaction; a return squeeze, a blink, a groggy call of his name, anything.

Nothing comes.

After several minutes of squeezing, watching and waiting, Danny gives up and sits back down, his back protesting the move with small spasms as he tries to get comfortable again. It's been two weeks now; two weeks since McGarrett stupidly went after Sang Min. Two weeks since the factory he chased him into blew like a box of fireworks on New Year's. Two weeks since he was rushed to Leahi Hospital more mangled than Danny cares to remember.

Danny has to remember to breathe now; with each passing day, the simple task becomes more and more labored, more difficult to do. There may as well be a gorilla sitting on his chest for how easy it is to inhale. The doctor says its a mixture of anxiety and chest congestion, demands that Danny go outside for some fresh air. He always refuses. If Steve can't go out, then why the hell should he get to?

He feels the all-too-familiar sting behind his eyes as he gazes down at his partner, his best friend on this god-forsaken island. In such a short amount of time, Steve has somehow managed to whittle his way into Danny's heart, gotten under the wall he put up after Rachel, and set up camp like a good little soldier. Now, he lays on the bed, cold, motionless, and artificially given life through a number of machines that Danny's too scared to even look at.

It's a good thing Sang Min died in the explosion. Saves Danny the trouble of killing him with his own hands.

“Boss?” Kono's voice reminds him to breathe and smile, fake like everything is fine and his heart isn't laying on the floor, mashed underfoot.

“Hey,” he replies, knowing his voice sounds terrible, like asphalt being scraped with a metal shovel until the screech is unbearable; he doesn't talk much in the hospital, doesn't have reason to.

“I brought you some clothes, and some foo--”

“Thank you. You can leave them outside,” Kono flinches, but doesn't argue. No one dares to counter him anymore.

“How's he doing?”

“No change. How's Chin?”

“Fine. He told me to say hi,”

Chin refuses to speak to Danny so long as he's by Steve's side. It has nothing to do with them being an item, and everything to do with the right cross Danny landed on his face the second day Steve was in ICU. Danny feels goosebumps seep over his own skin at the memory, recalling vividly his friend's shocked look. It will take time to mend their friendship, he knows, but he isn't ready to apologize, and Chin isn't ready to come in.

In the time it takes him to think through the events of those first few days, Kono has managed to get close enough to Steve to hold his hand. Danny can't stop the jolt that shoots through him any more than he can prevent the words that escape his lips.

“Don't do that.”

“Don't do wha--”

“Don't touch him. Leave him alone, he needs to heal. Can't you see that he's hurt?”

“I was just going to--”

“Just get out, Kono. Get out before you screw him up some more.”

It's not her fault. Not really. Of course, if he really wanted to be a dick, he could file his report and blame her careless assessment of the warehouse as the cause for Steve's current condition. But they _all_ looked at the plans, all took in the map, all knew full well the danger they were sticking Steve into. He feels nothing when she starts to cry; even less when she runs from the room to keep him from hearing her sob. Merely closes his eyes and remembers the last kiss Steve gave him in the rotting, dirty alley behind the warehouse.

He tasted like coffee and maple syrup, sweet and warm and so unlike Steve that it almost made Danny do a double take. It should have been obvious right then and there that the kiss was foreshadowing the end; it was too sweet, too perfect, too filled with love to be anything good. Kisses like that came at the edges of cliffs, beginnings of free falls into pits without bottoms. He's still falling.

Danny lets his blurred gaze sweep over Steve's battered body, trying to find a spot that's not mottled with bruises, diced with lacerations, or hanging open for all the world to see; he's still too swollen to be put fully back together, so they display him like deli meat behind the glass doors of the ICU. There's only his left shoulder, and for a moment, Danny's not even sure he wants to touch it, since he can't tell whether the green and blue is part of Steve's tattoo, or just another sickening hue his skin has taken on.

A sigh escapes him as he lets his masked lips touch the bare skin, Danny finding comfort in the fact that this part of Steve is still warm, still pulsing with life. The kiss is quick, painful and sharp. Steve doesn't need this on top of everything else; the doctors warned him not to get emotional in the presence of the patient. It will hurt his chances of recovery.

He tears out of the room and down the hall, pulling off the cap, mask, gloves, gown, and booties as he goes. No one tries to stop him; they're well-versed in the story of room C8. They simply look on as he runs past, pity in their eyes, all of them wishing the pain would stop one way or another for him.

The roof is only a floor above the ICU and Danny doesn't feel himself crashing into the stairwell door, nor climbing the stairs. All he knows is that he has to stop himself short of the edge as he runs out onto the gravel-covered top. His legs buckle and he's suddenly sitting, looking out over Honolulu, wishing he were in the bed next to Steve.

Danny doesn't care if his hands are dirty when they cover his face; if anyone hears him take the first chest-rattling sob. The one person who matters is hanging on by a thread and Danny's not sure he wants to be around when the cord snaps.

It takes a few minutes for him to grow quiet again; for the tears to dry on his cheeks and in his beard. For the swelling of his eyes to diminish enough to see his way back to the stairwell, back to the scrub-up room, back into hermetically-sealed cell that's become Steve's world.

The nurses try not to cry as they watch him shuffle back inside, take his partner's hand, and whisper those three little words over and over again, goosebumps being all he gets in return.


End file.
